Opponents of the right to die give much argument that often includes reference to God (or another deity). The arguments are so daring it’s a wonder they need God at all. As it turns out, they don’t.
Many people who oppose the right to die believe in life after death. Assuming for a moment that there is life after death, there is no logical reason why a person who is completely paralyzed and/or in abject pain should be denied entry into the hereafter against their will. The only justification for making someone else suck it up is the idea that God wouldn’t like it if someone took his or her own life.
So what?
So then God would banish that person to hell. This is not about life. This isn’t even about death. This is about how each and every one of us spends eternity - whether we believe in it or not. Someone wanting to die could just wait until they suffocate from the force of the opposition shoving their beliefs down their throat.
At the center of the controversy is the naturalness of it. There is nothing natural about ending our lives and/or ending the life of someone else who is physically incapable of doing so – even if death is their, you know, dying wish. Naturalness (rather the lack of it) is also the argument against abortion, birth control, fertility treatments, and stem cell research.
Only God, it is asserted, can give and justifiably take life. Unfortunately for those who wish to end their own suffering, this is where the opposition’s belief in the power of God ends - and belief in their own power begins.
There is absolutely nothing natural about life-saving technology. And yet, it is a human being who does — with full employment of this very artificiality — deny someone entry into the hereafter.
Those opposed to the right to die have their cake and are eating it, too - right off someone else’s dying body.
Article comments
1 - Baronius
Diana, I've read your articles before and disagreed with them to the extent I've understood them. This article surpasses them all. I have no idea what your argument is. I'm not saying that rhetorically - I really have no idea what you're saying.
2 - Teri Centner
Let me see if I can sum up what *I* think Diana was saying. If I'm an atheist and I want to end my life, I can't -- because somebody who believes in God says so. They believe I'll go to Hell if I take my own life. I don't believe in Hell, so just let me die.
I hope that a) made sense; and b) was what Diana was trying to say.